Day: September 17, 2003

Hysterical FedEx commercial reflecting how so many young MBAs enter the business world: snotty, arrogant, and with very little grasp of reality.

Transcript:

Woman: Hi, Tom, I know it’s your first day, but we could really use your help.Tom: (with slightly smug smile, pulling on suit jacket) You got it.Woman: (walking) We’re just in a bit of a jam.Tom: (squirts breath spray)Woman: (continues, gesturing to roomful of FedEx boxes) All this has to get out today…Tom: (look of astonishment, smug smile returning) Yeah…uh…I don’t do shipping…Woman: Oh, no no no, it’s very easy. We use FedEx.com (sitting him down at a computer open to the FedEx.com website). Anybody can do it.Tom: (smug smile wider, he can’t believe she’s asking him to do this) Uh… no… you don’t understand: I have an MBA.Woman: Oh, you have an MBA…Tom: Yeah.Woman: In that case I’ll have to show you how to do it.

New York Times: “Taste my prosciutto,” he said with a drawl. Southern country ham producers are waking up to the similarities between their products (selling at $4-5 a pound) and Italian prosciuttos (selling for $20-30 a pound). I always knew country ham was ambrosia, but I’ll have to find a way to try it thin cut to see if it really jumps across categories this way.

I know one thing: red-eye gravy and prosciutto di parma scares me a bit. Though, on days when I’m not watching my diet, a breakfast of a fried egg over a prosciutto slice is pretty damn ambrosial (making matters worse, you fry the prosciutto in butter). So maybe red eye gravy wouldn’t be such an odd addition.

Wired: Senator takes a swing at the RIAA. My new favorite Republican senator (a rather short list), Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas introduced new legislation that would return checks and balances to the Internet downloading fracas. The bill would require those who would seek Internet users’ identities from ISPs to sue for downloading to file a John Doe lawsuit, a more complicated process that requesting a subpoena. The lawsuit process would reintroduce some much needed process to the fracas that so far has seen the RIAA blackmail a twelve year old girl and her family out of $2,000.

Of more immediate interest to me, the bill would also require a labeling system for all digital media that are protected by Digital Rights Management. This would be really good to have on CDs (and DVDs, which all have such protection through region code schemes), but I’m not sure how it would work on digital files. Interesting, though.

As always, protect yourself. The Protect site on Microsoft.com makes it easier than ever—there’s a step by step wizard for each OS, and on Windows XP you can use a Windows Update-like client to set up your firewall for you.